Ben Fields Crosses Oceans for ‘Extraordinary Light’ (Song Premiere)

Making a career in music never seemed like a real possibility to Ben Fields. Yet the singer and songwriter moved from Australia to New York a few years ago just in case he was mistaken—and soon enough signed a record deal with Seymour Stein, founder of Sire Records. With Fields’ first album on the way, he premieres the single “Extraordinary Light” today on Speakeasy.

It’s a graceful vintage-style pop song that pairs Fields’ sleepy voice with gentle, rolling piano, a subtly powerful rhythm section and the swell of strings.

Stein was a big part of the reason Fields moved to New York. The singer met Stein at a music conference in Perth, Australia, and gave him a copy of the one song he had managed to record. The record executive responsible for signing Madonna, the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Pretenders and Depeche Mode, thanked him and gave Fields a business card and told the singer to look him up if he was ever in New York. After encountering Stein again in the airport on his way out of Perth, Fields soon packed up and headed to Brooklyn.

“Without being ethereal, I just felt like there was something there,” says Fields, a Rochester, N.Y., native who moved to Australia with his family as a teen. “My sense with Seymour was like, if you put in enough, if you put in a real effort, something could happen here. So I decided to put in the effort.”

Fields says he had lived in New York for nearly a year while working on a record before he tried contacting Stein. Actually getting an appointment with him proved its own challenge. “I called his office for a good three months before I was allowed to go over there,” Fields says.

Though playing for Stein didn’t go the way Fields had hoped it would—he wasn’t sure Stein remembered him—Fields made an impression: a few months later, Stein invited him back to the office and it wasn’t long until they began hammering out a contract that Fields signed in November 2012.

“Liked everything about Ben, except I felt I’d like to hear more really strong songs,” Stein says by e-mail, referring to their Australia meeting. “We met several times after that. I always tried to be supportive and encouraging, and the songs kept getting better and better.”

“Extraordinary Light” is due June 17 on Sire. What do you think of the song? Leave your thoughts in the comments.